Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 26, 2003

A 24-year-old convict was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of killing a well-liked Belmont grocery store manager who was shot as he drove to work one morning six months ago from his East Bay home, authorities said.

Henry Paul Inocencio II will be formally charged today in the Sept. 24 slaying of Robert Ratto, 34, on a street in unincorporated Alameda County near San Leandro, sheriff's officials said.

Investigators said Inocencio had been driving a rental car and pulled up alongside Ratto's car on 164th Avenue when he fired several shots at Ratto. Ratto's car then crashed into a tree, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

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"It appears to have been a purely random act," sheriff's Sgt. Scott Dudek said. A man riding in the car with Inocencio witnessed the shooting.

Authorities credited Ratto's kin and employees from the Belmont Safeway, which Ratto managed, with handing out thousands of flyers asking witnesses to step forward.

One of the tipsters helped police identify the rental car several weeks ago,

Dudek said, and investigators found evidence in the car that led them to the suspect.

Inocencio was arrested at San Quentin State Prison, where he was being held on a parole violation, and brought him to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He had been convicted of drug charges and had previously lived in Hayward, Dudek said.

One of Ratto's three brothers said family members were relieved by the arrest but still struggled over the senseless loss.

"The hard part for us is that Robert did nothing to provoke this guy," said Chris Ratto of Oakland. "It doesn't make sense. It destroys a family."

Ratto had managed the store on Ralston Avenue in Belmont for more than a year, and for 15 years before that he had worked at Safeway stores in San Leandro and Oakland, where he met his wife, Ann.

He also left behind a son, Joshua, who is 4.

Employees of the Belmont store copied flyers and helped hand them out three times since Ratto's death, his brother said.

"They lost a store manager just like his family lost a father, brother and husband," Chris Ratto said.